Online Appendix for "Regions Lie Where Politicians Want them to Lie" (Job Market Paper)
A: A Summary of Historical Evidence of Region Creation and Change
This is a summary of changes discussed more fully in my forthcoming dissertation.
| Example | Citation |
| The ancient Greeks divide the world into the regions of Asia, Europe, and Africa and think of the inhabitants of each region as having specific characteristics that make them more or less fit to rule. For example, Greek writers and politicians on the mainland of modern-day Greece derided the "Oriental" or Asian Greeks as weak and decadent when compared to the "European" Greeks, who were lauded for their love of freedom. | Lewis and Wigen (1997, p.22-23) |
| The Athenian politician Demsthenes calls the Kingdom of Macedonia part of the barbarian world instead of part of Hellas. | Beaton (2021, p.154) |
| Members of the ulama call for resistance to the Crusaders for violating the imagined physical location of the dar al-islam. | Izant (2010, p.57) |
| European elites refer to the imagined physical geography of "Christendom" to persuade other Europeans to fight against the Ottoman empire. | Baumer (1944) |
| The boundaries of the imagined physical location of the dar al-islam wax and wane depending on the criteria members of the ulama give to its existence. | Alsech (2023, p.404-409) |
| Medieval Muslim geographers separate Africa into the regions bilad as-sudan and bilad al-bidan to justify continued slavery of Black Africans. | Hamid (2025) |
| Medieval Muslim scholars designate Africa as the land of the descendants of Ham, who was cursed to be a servant to his brothers, thus justifying slavery in the region. | Hamid (2025) |
| European elites increasingly frame the world in terms of the regions East and West, with the West being enlightened and the East being backwards to justify colonialism. | Lewis and Wigen (2997, p.76-78); Armstrong (1993) |
| French statesman Jean-Baptiste Colbert develops the idea of the Mediterranean as a physical region in order to identify a place where France can dominate free from British interference. | Harris (2005) |
| American elites (primarily Secretary of State Elihu Root, the legal scholar James Brown Scott, and presidents Monroe and Roosevelt) push the idea of "the Western hemisphere" to deter further European colonial incursions. | Scarfi (2016) |
| The French government emphasizes Algeria's Roman and Christian Byzantine past to put both France and Algeria into "the Roman world" to legitimize colonial activity in Algeria. | Wyrtzen (2015, p.68) |
| European intellectuals place Russia outside the bounds of Europe since it does not fit the liberalizing strains of European intellectual life at the time. In Russia, many Russian elites either stress the Europeanness of Russia in order to hasten modernization, or else they agree with the otherness of Russia (or at least place Russia in some sort of pan-Slavic region). | Lewis & Wigan (1997, p. 57-58) |
| Chinese intellectual Hsu Chi-Yu endorses the Western-imposed continental regional identity of Asia as a chance to give China prominence in a large geographic area. | Lewis & Wigan (1997, p.71-72) |
| Japanese intellectuals embrace the concept of Asia as a region and Pan-Asianism as a means to resist European colonialism. | Lewis & Wigan (1997, p.71-72) |
| Spanish elite (such as Pedro Alarcon and Blas Infante) resurrect the concept of a region called Al Andalus to justify colonialism in Morocco. | Calderwood (2018) |
| Moroccan nationalist 'Abd al-Khaliq al-Turris references the region of Al-Andalus to support Moroccan involvement in Franco's military uprising in Spain. | Calderwood (2018, p.5) |
| The Greek government institutes a curriculum in school that tries to separate Greece from its centuries-old orbit around Ottoman identity to a "Hellenic" or European one. | Beaton (2021, p.421) |
| The British essentially invent the region of the Middle East when they create a military province by that same name with a supply center in Cairo. | Hitti (1961, p.3); Kose (2024) |
| Jewish leaders such as Nisam Malul, Arthur Ruppin, and Martin Berber call for Jewish settlers to shed attachments to Europe and reorient their culture and thinking to a "Semitic" or Arab one. | Tessler (1994, p.135-136 & 182) |
| German intellectual Thonmas Mann says Germany is not a Western European or even a "Western" nation, but that it represents a noble nation of Barbarian ancestry locked in struggle with the descendants of a decadent Roman empire. | Lewis & Wigan (1998, p.58) |
| German politician Karl Haushofer places Germany as a bridge between East and West, but claims German culture is closer to Russia or even China that Western Europe. | Lewis & Wigan (1997, p.59) |
| Rudyard Kipling's poem "For All We have and are" refers to German as "Huns", which were considered a non-European people. | Musolff (2017, p.102) |
| British and American governments issue war propaganda posters depicting Germans as "Huns", and thus not "true" Europeans. Indeed, the "Beat back the Hun with Liberty Bonds" poster depicts Germans as looking decidedly Asiatic. | Musolff (2017, p.106) |
| Turkish leader Mustafa Ataturk asserts that Turkey belongs to both Europe and Western civilization in general. | Lewis & Wigan (1997, p.69) |
| The government of then Czechoslovakia insists on being called a Western European nation, instead of Eastern or Central. | Lewis & Wigan (1997, p.61) |
| The United States government creates the U.S. Ethnographic Board to divide the world into smaller regions to facilitate military planning. This led, over time, to greater emphasis on regions such as the Middle East, the Near East, and South-East Asia. | Lewis & Wigen (1997, p.166) |
| The U.S. government enacts Title VI in the National Defense Education Act, which provisions funding for universities to focus on the new regions promoted by the U.S. Ethnographic Board. | Lewis & Wigen (1997, p.166) |
| Egyptian elites opposed to Nasser's pan-Arabism call Egypt a Mediterranean, not an Arab or Middle Eastern country. | Harris (2005, p.345) |
| Moroccan elites and leaders position Morocco as belonging to various regions depending upon expedience. Initially, King Mohamed V seeks to position Morocco as part of al watan al Arabi (the Arab homeland). His son, King Hassan, however was more conflicted, at times downplaying the Arab regional affiliation and at other times highlighting it. His son, King Mohammed VI, however has firmly positioned Morocco as Africa. | Maddy-Weitzman (2024, p.2-24); Becker (2020) |
| Charles de Gaulle says England is not part of Europe in a desire to keep England from joining the EU. | Carl et al. (2019) |
| Ayatollah Khomeini calls Israel a Western state that does not belong to the Middle East | Khomeini (1979) |
| Turkish President Tagut Ozal encourages Turks to think of themselves not as belonging to the regions of Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, but as a bridge between these regions. | Marshall (2015) |
| A group of anthropologists, geographers, and historians form a new discipline called Mediterranean Studies to promote the idea of the Mediterranean as a region. | Calderwood (2018, p.22-23) |
| European leaders alternate between considering Turkey European or not based on a desire to include them as part of NATO and, more importantly, the EU. | Harding (2002) |
| NATO leaders (such as Javier Solano the Secretary General) continuously emphasize the fact that Kosovo is in Europe to justify intervention there. | Daalder (1999); (NATO, 1999) |
| President Erdogan contrasts Turkey's religion and culture with Europe and tries to position Turkey as belonging to the "Islamic world." | Lewis & Wigan (1997, p.69-70). |
| The Moroccan and Spanish government agree on a joint tourism initiative that promotes the countries belonging to the region of Al Andalus. | Calderwood (2018, p.7) |
| 43 heads of state create an organization called Union for the Mediterranean to promote "understanding between cultures and civilizations in the Euro-Mediterranean region." | Caldewood (2018, p.23) |
| ISIS justify their existence based on the need to rid the imagined physical geography of the dar al-islam of apostasy. | Robinson (2021, p.108) |
| President Trump divides the world into "shit-hole countries" and "places like Norway" in an effort to change the demographic makeup of migrants to the U.S. | Washington Post (2018) |
| Conservative political elites in Europe issue the Vienna Declaration as a rallying cry to stop immigration to the EU, specifically citing the "defence of Europe against…agressive Islamism…[and] the boundless enlargement of European integration to…non-European territories in Asia and Africa such as Turkey." | Akbaba (2018) |
| French politician Le Pen invokes the idea of Europe to recast immigrants from other places as "invaders" of Europe. | Akbaba (2018) |
| Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban refers to a "siege of Europe" by those who are not Europeans with "European values" and who are not Christians. | Akbaba (2018) |
| Vladimir Putin invokes the idea of the region of "the Ancient Rus" to help justify the war on Ukraine. | Putin (2022) |
| Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov encourages Ukranian refugees instead of other refugees because the Ukranian refugees are European. | Boccacino (2022) |
| Russian and Ukranian elites seek to recast Ukraine as part of different regions; the Kremlin designates Russia as part of a historical "Kievan Rus", while Ukranian leaders consider it fully European. | Marin (2021) |
| Responding to the Abraham Accords, Israeli elites in the media, government, and business open new Desks, agencies, and curriculum items that highlight Israel's place in the Middle East. | Zaga & Weisal (2024) |
| Israeli intellectuals frame the October 7th attack by Hamas as an attack by a non-Western force on a Western country. This echoes Ashenazi-Zionist ideology that describes Israel as a European bastion in the East. | Havelivi (2023); Calderwood (2023, p.200) |
B: